the chommo chronicles

.follicular emancipation.

Four weeks ago, on a lovely, late-summer Friday afternoon, I posted the following Facebook status update: 

[Chommo] is about to get her hair cut by a non-Dominican for only the second time in her life. Hold me, I’m scared. 

Well. By the tone of the responses, you would have thought I’d announced I was becoming a Red Sox fan or something.

Don't do it! I'm scared for you!!

You are asking for trouble!!! Nooooooo don't do it. Where are u? I will find you a dominican hair salon.

Ay mi amor - be brave!!!!!!! …Then again, I get my hair cut by a Japanese girl with pinstraight hair and she rocks my world!

Um...good luck...I'm not even Dominican and I hesitate to let non-Dominicans touch my hair.    

You should be. Good luck!

Have you lost your mind????!!!! Last time I did that I went from having thigh lenght hair to looking like curly q.  

Um, way to set my mind at ease and give me that virtual hug I asked for, ladies.

.adventures in hairland.

As the youngest daughter of traditional Dominican immigrant parents, certain things were expected of me. I was always to obey my parents and never, ever disrespect them. I was to study hard in school and stay away from the tecato* element that hung out in front of our building. I was never to get an ankle bracelet, piercings other than the two in my ears, a belly ring, or a tattoo, as these were all marks of whoredom. I would move out of the house only to get married – “¿Que roommates ni que roommates?,” my mother would mutter – and on the day of my wedding, I would be a virgin, proudly and purely walking down the church aisle to meet my (hopefully Dominican) husband, for whom I would keep house and produce babies. And, like my lady ancestors before me, I would always maintain a mane of lustrous, long straight hair.

Well. I still respect and obey my parents out of a Pavlovian fear of incurring my mother’s wrath. But I went off to live in France without any parental supervision at age 16. I got my nose pierced and am planning on getting a tattoo very soon. My civil marriage ceremony took place on a beach and lasted all of five minutes. I married a Puerto Rican, with whom I share laundry and meal duty.  Six years after our wedding, we remain defiantly child-free.

But where I really fall short on the Ideal Dominican Daughter scale is my hair. Oooohhhhh, my hair. Ave Maria Purisima, my hair. While it is sometimes healthy, it is rarely, if ever, lustrous, long, or straight. Most of the time, it looks like a crazy lions head.

I'm so sorry, Mami.

.a retail intermission.

Our Brooklyn apartment is where trees comes to die.  I'm serious. We receive almost every catalogue known to (wo)man. Ok, we don't get those Wiccan spirit women catalogues – you know the ones  – but that's okay; I make up for their absence by habitually bringing home copies of the SkyMall catalogue. Anyhoodle, for some reason all the catalogues come to the attention of Kim Jong-Illmatic. Yes, even the Victoria's Secret catalogues.

A few days ago we received the Victoria's Secret Fall Shoes & Accessories 2009 catalogue.

And, oh my goodness.

Without further ado, and with the help of our trusty scanner, I invite you in to witness levels of cobbler fugtitude the likes of which have rarely been seen before.

.red and black lumberjack/with a hat to match.

 Last Friday night, Kim Jong-Illmatic and I found ourselves sat South Brooklyn Pizza (…meh) with our friends L and M. Maybe it was all the Manhattans, Kettle One martinis and beers that we’d downed earlier in the evening – Kim Jong Illmatic, M and I were drinking for five that evening, as L is five months pregnant and both she and the baby have been medically advised to abstain from alcohol for a while. Maybe it was the giddy mood borne from actually doing something on a Friday night rather than collapsing on our couch in an exhausted, dull heap. Maybe it’s that we were all children of the 1990s, and the song is part of our adolescent soundtrack. Whatever it was, the minute Biggie Smalls’ Juicy started blasting from the bartender’s ipod, the evening turned into an impromptu karaoke night.

Minutes before we’d been discussing our upcoming long weekend in upstate New York and the mechanics of buying a life insurance policy – boring adult stuff – and the next we were singing* about all the teachers that told us we’d I'd never amount to nothin', about all the people that lived above the buildings that we were hustlin' in front of that called the police on us when we was just tryin' to make some money to feed our daughters. Remember?

.the end of the affair.

While it lasted, ours was a love that was pure, passionate, and all-consuming. When we were together, people – strangers, even – would stop in their tracks to oooh and aahh over the dashing figure we cut. We were wild, adventurous and globe-trotting, impetuously meeting each other in Paris, Madrid, London, Los Angeles, and once, over the course of three months, Panama. Nothing – not bad weather, not rough terrain, not exhaustion, not injury – could stop us from giddily running around our hometown, excitedly looking for a party, a happy hour, an outdoor festival, a gathering of any kind at which we could revel in our happiness.  

And then it happened. We started to grow apart, the soundtrack to our slow, soft disenchantment provided by Stevie Wonder and his melancholy rendition of “Lately.”